About

If you love books, especially those written for children and young adults, then you are an honorary member of The Nerdy Book Club. Like us, you probably always have a book along to read, a title to recommend, and time to talk about works held dear.

This online space was designed to give us a home to share that love of reading with others as well as to organize voting and announcing winners of our First Annual Nerdies Book Awards.

Websites don’t make or maintain themselves though. This one has four facilitators who work hard to keep this place running smoothly.

Donalyn Miller is currently a fifth grade at O.A. Peterson Elementary in Forth Worth, Texas. Donalyn is the author of The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child and the forthcoming Reading in the Wild, and she has blogged at The Book Whisperer, for Education Week Teacher. Donalyn lives atop a dragon’s hoard of unread books and spends her spare time traveling, visiting old friends, and daydreaming in the pages. You can find her on Twitter @donalynbooks.

Colby Sharp is a 3rd grade teacher. You can find him on Twitter @colbysharp.

Katherine Sokolowski inhabits two worlds. The first is in a tiny rural town surrounded by cornfields. She teaches fifth grade in Monticello, Illinois – the same town where she grew up. She also inhabits a world of books. The characters she has met there have taught her countless lessons. She shares this love of reading with her students each year as well as her two sons and husband. You can find Katherine on Twitter @katsok.

Cindy Minnich makes her home in the lovely river town of Millersburg, PA, with her husband, son, and a menagerie of fuzzy children. She teaches 9th and 12th grade English at Upper Dauphin Area High School. Maybe she shouldn’t admit this, but she probably likes technology almost as much as she loves books. You can find her on Twitter @CBethM.

If you have questions or feedback about the site, please feel free to contact us via email at:

Heya just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the pictures aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue.
I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same outcome.

I love the content of the Nerdy Book Club and have found many wonderful books to recommend to my kids over the last year or so.

I’m not so happy with the site redesign and would ask you to consider changing a few things 1) please increase the contrast between the blogroll and the background. It’s unreadable. 2) Please make the forward/back navigation between posts easier to spot and easier to get to (for instance by adding and easy way to get from the end of the comments back to the article or by having the forward/back links at the very top of the page as well as between the post and the comments).

I respect and admire the work that goes into this site. That is the reason I came to this site to post this question. I teach fourth grade. As we discuss graphic novels do you think it is best to approach this as simply a different format of writing that crosses over many genres or do I include it as separate genre by itself? Although I understand the argument that it is a format and not a genre, I wonder from a fourth grade reader’s perspective if it might be easier to study it as genre?

Rebecca, when I saw your comment I wanted to throw in my two cents, not as a teacher, but as a writer. You’re correct with you said first: graphic novels are a format, not a genre and I think it’s best not to confuse the kids between the two, especially since these are two terms commonly and mistakenly interchanged. A format is HOW something is presented. A genre is the THEME or SUBJECT MATTER that’s presented. Hope this helps :D

Just found you! I taught elementary school in Los Angeles (close to USC and downtown) for 30 years and am obviously a Nerd, because my latest book is a picture book biography of Noah Webster. It won the 2013 Golden Kite Award for best non-fiction book of 2012 from the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. Thanks for this terrific site!
Jeri

Jeri, I LOVE this book! Congrats on the award! I’m sure I read of it last year, but I believe I learned about your book through a review. I just know I loved reading it and learned things about Noah I never knew :) You’ll love this site and you’d probably love Colby’s blog: http://mrcolbysharp.com/ and John Schumacher’s, too: http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/

Glad you found Nerdy Book Club! So nice to see you post here so I could compliment you :)

I had the pleasure of “discovering” you when I reviewed Comics Squad Recess for the Children’s Literature Network last September. That review, part of CLN’s Gone Graphic column, now appears on my website’s continuation of Gone Graphic: http://www.natalierosinsky.com. This website also has a separate articles page akin to your Reading Lives section.

It was just a coincidence that I stumbled upon The Nerdy Book Club, and now I just can’t stop reading! I really love what you are doing and it makes me feel my plan to become a librarian is really the right choice for me – I too want to help others discover the wonderful world of reading!
With love from Sweden, Emilie